Gagauz people

Moldova's autonomous region of Gagauzia goes to elections on Sunday for a new governor, or Bashkan, with eight candidates in the race, most of them with pro-Russian views.

The elections in Gagauzia represent a first test before local elections throughout the country due in autumn, and for presidential elections that will take place next year.

The Gagauz are a small Christian Turkic minority that lives primarily in southern Moldova and Ukraine's Odessa region. According to the 1989 Soviet census, over 153,000 Gagauz lived in Moldova, concentrated mainly in the cities of Comrat and Ceadîr-Lunga, and with a considerable minority in the nearby regions of Vulcănești, Taraclia, and Basarabeasca.

There have been some positive developments. In 2019, the Moldovan LGBT rights group Genderdoc-M successfully held a Pride march in the capital Chisinau, though, unfortunately, participants had to be accompanied by police escort.

The autonomous region's governor, Irina Vlah, tells BIRN that the way for Gagauzia to reverse its damaging exodus is to 'produce technology - not just consume it'.

Dimitri Tarlow's theater adaptation of M. Karagatsis' "Junkermann" comes to the Poreia Theater @ Victoria in Athens for a second season after a resoundingly successful 2018-19. "Junkermann" tells the story of the rise and fall of a Finnish nobleman who flees Russia after the revolution and finds himself in Piraeus, Greece, where he reinvents a life for himself and climbs the social ladder.

Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip confirmed on Wednesday night that he received two water cannon trucks used to disperse protesters during demonstrations as a "gift" from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his visit to Moldova last week.

Exactly 101 years ago, a series of breath-taking developments in European and Turkish seas put the Ottoman Empire into a war that would destroy it. Recently revealed documents correct some misconceptions about how the Turks entered World War I "Enver [Pasha] had wanted to stand back and let the Great Powers destroy one another.

A special collection of 122 pieces, including the personal belongings of Ottoman soldier and politician Enver Pa?a, who was a highly powerful figure in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, will be put on auction April 5 in Istanbul.